218 WILD WINGS 



time, some of them containing as many as seventy- five birds. 

 Meantime I am shooting at them as they pass, with my re- 

 flex camera, despite the dull light. As may be imagined, the 

 company on the sand has become immense, covering many 

 acres. They keep up a sort of murmuring noise, and now and 

 then all fly up, with a perfect storm and tumult of wings and 

 voices, soon to alight again. Even after dark they are yet 

 arriving, as one may hear. I hazard the guess that there are 

 often ten thousand curlews at such a roost each night. At the 

 first glimmer of day they are off again for the marshes. It is 

 very important that every Southern State should prohibit the 

 spring shooting of shore-birds. Unless they do so, in a few 

 years these species will surely be exterminated, at the recent, 

 and even present, rate of wholesale slaughter. It is simply 

 wicked, as well as short-sighted, to kill them at this time, when 

 they are about to breed. 



Despite all the camera-hunting of the day, it is notable that 

 there have been almost no shore-bird photographs in exist- 

 ence. The reason is that the task is almost prohibitive. Shore- 

 birds are timid, quick in their motions ; they live in the open, 

 and are so small most of them that, unless one can get 

 very near indeed, the picture will amount to but little. I have 

 spent whole days in blinds with decoys, or with the camera 

 focused on the water's edge, vainly waiting for a single one 

 of the provoking birds to come within proper range. Occa- 

 sionally I have thus secured a single picture. Little by little, 

 in the course of years, through taking advantage of every 

 opportunity, my series of shore-bird pictures has been slowly 

 growing, and once I improved the chance of a lifetime. 



It was in my cruise among the Florida Keys when I left 

 the party who were to return in the schooner to Miami, and 

 Warden Bradley and I started on the fifty-mile beat to wind- 

 ward in a centre-board skiff back to our headquarters. The 



